I. Field
The following description relates generally to wireless communications, and more particularly to monitoring and switching radio frequency channels in a wireless communication environment.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems have become a prevalent means by which a majority of people worldwide has come to communicate. Wireless communication devices have become smaller and more powerful in order to meet consumer needs and to improve portability and convenience. The increase in processing power in mobile devices such as cellular telephones has lead to an increase in demands on wireless network transmission systems. Such systems typically are not as easily updated as the cellular devices that communicate there over. As mobile device capabilities expand, it can be difficult to maintain an older wireless network system in a manner that facilitates fully exploiting new and improved wireless device capabilities.
A typical wireless communication network (e.g., employing frequency, time, and code division techniques) includes one or more base stations that provide a coverage area and one or more mobile (e.g., wireless) terminals that can transmit and receive data within the coverage area. A typical base station can simultaneously transmit multiple data streams for broadcast, multicast, and/or unicast services, wherein a data stream is a stream of data that can be of independent reception interest to a mobile terminal. A mobile terminal within the coverage area of that base station can be interested in receiving one, more than one or all the data streams carried by the composite stream. Likewise, a mobile terminal can transmit data to the base station or another mobile terminal. Such communication between base station and mobile terminal or between mobile terminals can be degraded due to channel variations and/or interference power variations.
Presently, a forward-link-only (FLO) signal can be transmitted to a user device over a radio frequency (RF) channel that occupies, for instance, a 6 MHz bandwidth portion in the lower 700 MHz frequency band. FLO signals can be present in more than one RF channel, for example, to accommodate multiple streams of contents. However, conventional wireless systems do not provide for monitoring and/or switching between a plurality of RF channels containing FLO signals, and the like. Thus, there exists a need in the art for a system and/or methodology of improving throughput in such wireless network systems.